Is it justifiable to downvote a question if a newcomer poses a question and someone with a very high reputation thinks that OP misunderstood the documentation on which the question is based? My scenario,

  • I had read the documentation( i agree that I misunderstood how the sample code works)
  • I tried a different implementation, and when I was confused about why it was working, I posted it.

  • Multiple people came out and corrected my understanding

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    If I saw signs of effort and a mistake, I personally wouldn't downvote but there's no downvote rule so others may. – xxbbcc Nov 15 '19 at 16:35
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    @Rajatbanerjee - voting works differently on META boards than on the base stack. See here: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/47634/… - it won't actually be very helpful for this post since your post is not a proposal - but it should help you realize that the vote here for this question on meta is more "that isn't the way things work" rather than "your question was bad". – davidbak Nov 15 '19 at 17:27
  • sure @davidbak .i was wondering at the irony – Rajat banerjee Nov 15 '19 at 17:30
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    How SO users use their right to vote is nobody's concern. If however they use them to fraudulently upvote posts then it is a deep concern, it destroys the value that this web site provides. Your profile show too much evidence of such fraud. You need to alert a moderator to get that problem fixed. – Hans Passant Nov 15 '19 at 17:58
  • Not sure i understood what "Your profile show too much evidence of such fraud." or what led you to such understanding – Rajat banerjee Nov 15 '19 at 18:07
  • i would say that my question here adds to the previously asked one. – Rajat banerjee Nov 15 '19 at 18:17

It's up to the voter to decide how their vote should be spent.

In this scenario, depending on the question and how it's framed, I may or may not downvote it as well. If the answer would be no more valuable than repeating the standing documentation, then there's no net gain of value around this circumstance, which would be sufficient enough reason to downvote it.

However, if your question did highlight a "gotcha" or a nuance that couldn't be found in the actual documentation, I might consider upvoting it.

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  • 3 people bothered to answer my question. Also, people upvoted the question, the answer i chose, as well as the asnwers I did not choose. One of the guys who answered was almost 900k, and he chose to show me the difference in my understanding, rather than putting me down. I would have preferred if the user has asked me to modify my question. In the end, i got my question answered, so i am happy. – Rajat banerjee Nov 15 '19 at 16:45

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